Plant Based Snacks - Your Guide to Healthy Eating

Types of Plant-Based Snacks

A snack can therefore be: 

• Raw
• Cooked
• Salty
• Sweet

In addition, snacks can vary greatly in their:

• Nutritional value
• Energy intake (and therefore calories)
• Taste
• Quantity

Let’s look at a few examples.

Fresh fruit and vegetables

There’s plenty to choose from, depending on individual tastes. 

You can eat:

• An apple, a basket of blueberries, and a carrot
• A pear and a banana
• An endive and a fennel
• A persimmon and figs
• dates
• Tomatoes and a cucumber or avocado
• A coconut
• Watermelon or melon

Obviously, some snacks will be very hydrating, like those made with fresh fruit and vegetables, but fruits like dates or figs will also be very high in sugar. Avocados and coconuts are much higher in fat.

Dried fruit and vegetables

Dried fruits are more concentrated in fructose, while dried vegetables are more nutritious because they are more concentrated, but no longer provide the necessary hydration.

In short, fresh and dried fruit and vegetables do not perform the same function and serve different purposes.

Oilseeds (nuts and seeds)

Generally speaking, they provide a significant source of energy in the form of fats. 

Some, like pistachios, are also rich in protein (20%). To enhance their palatability, they are often roasted, salted or sweetened. 

It’s important to eat them organically, without added industrial sugar or salt, and in moderation when a high energy intake is required.

Bars

Bars are probably the most practical snack there is. 

Their advantages are numerous:

• No refrigeration required
• Very compact
• Can be eaten directly without a spoon or fork
• Come in an impressive number of compositions and flavors

We therefore advise you to choose raw, grain-free organic bars.

Cookies or crackers

Wheat flour cookies are generally not good nutritional snacks, with the exception of spelt flour crackers. 

They often contain sunflower oil, rich in omega 6, and too much sugar, even if they are wholemeal. 

So opt for those with less fat and sugar, and without wheat flour.

Chips and popcorn

If we consider the organic potato chips commonly marketed with sunflower oil, it’s obvious that they can’t be considered healthy snacks. French fries should be eaten in moderation, as they can be problematically transformed by heat and oil. 

Organic corn-based popcorns can be eaten plain or with cinnamon, cocoa or sea salt. Nutritionally, popcorns are low in protein and high in sugars, making them an occasional snack.

Spreadables

A wide range of spreads are available, to be eaten with crudités or crackers. Based on hummus, soy or kidney beans, most are healthy, nutritious and appetizing. Of course, you should exclude the industrial versions of these spreads, which contain unhealthy oils, white sugars and additives.

Yogurts

Plant-based yogurts are an interesting snack option when you’re at home or in the office. They need only be kept in the fridge, and offer a wide choice of flavors. Their base can be hemp, coconut, rice or soy.

Shakes

Many preparations based on protein-rich food powders make excellent, nutritionally balanced shakes. On the other hand, people who prefer to chew their food will not take shakes.

Shakes provide the body with a large quantity of balanced, easy-to-digest nutrients. They can be based on:

• Hemp
• Buckwheat
• Rice
• Peas
• Peanuts
• Oats
• Spirulina

What’s more, they can be combined with a wide range of fruit powders to provide sufficient fluids, which is important when practicing sport.

Easy and Quick Plant-Based Snack Ideas

The best snacks are those adapted to the situation. 

In summer, opt for fresh fruit and vegetables, smoothies and plant milks. If you’re on the move and don’t have fresh fruit to take with you, you can always keep a supply of freeze-dried fruit on hand to rehydrate when you need it.

To find out more about freeze-drying, subscribe now and discover our webinars on the subject.

Avoid fruit juices, prefer smoothies.

In winter, opt for oilseeds or spreads. More nourishing, they can replace a small meal or satisfy you enough to avoid devouring a packet of cookies or potato chips.

If you play sport, opt for balanced snacks designed for athletes, such as Iswari bars (or any other equivalent brand) or snacks based on highly assimilable foods like spirulina.

How to Incorporate Plant-Based Snacks into Your Routine

Many people eat nothing apart from their three daily meals, and that’s fine. 

Others have more irregular lifestyles, or travel, or have other activities that prevent them from eating regularly. 

For them, snacks are an important part of their diet, in which case they need to pay much more attention to their nutritional intake to avoid undesirable fatigue following unbalanced consumption of sugars or fats.

Still, others have greater physical or intellectual requirements and need to add snacks during the day on top of daily meals. In this case, the composition of those snacks must be in line with their needs.

There is no miracle formula to include plant-based snacks in a daily routine as it has to be adapted to each person. More importantly, a lot of people don’t need to eat snacks, even plant-based ones. 

In any case, there is an important rule to keep: snacks should only be added to a healthy diet. 

Having a healthy diet is the fundamental basis to which we can add plant-based snacks if needed.

Overcoming Common Challenges

Snacks are added to a healthy diet. If the latter is not balanced, snacks will compensate for a dietary imbalance. Cravings are an excellent example.

Cravings

If, for example, you eat a midday meal consisting of a salad and a piece of fruit, you shouldn’t be surprised to find yourself craving sugar and fat an hour later. 

Cravings can also be linked to a health problem that can’t be solved by healthy eating, but can be treated with Holistic Natural Health Experts. So don’t take this type of symptom lightly, as it may reveal a health problem.

Industrial snacks

As we’ve already mentioned, these snacks should be avoided, even if their marketing packaging tends to present them as natural. 

Whether bars, cookies, birchers or shakes, they contain bad sugars, fats, flavourings, enhancers and other additives. They also contain refined foods, and non-organic ingredients will be contaminated with pesticides.

Light snacks are no better, on the contrary, they contain sweeteners.    

Healthy alternatives and solutions

If you’re used to eating industrial dried fruit, it’s easy to replace it with organic dried fruit. 

Yogurt made from animal milk can easily be replaced by yogurt made from plant milk, and so on. 

Initially, a replacement method can be very useful to avoid becoming frustrated with your habits. 

In the meantime, you will need more understanding about a healthy diet to go further. For that, we advise you to subscribe and read our book “Healthy Food: Your Fundamental Right”. In this comprehensive resource, you will find all the information you need to implement a healthy diet and add to it, if needed, the healthiest plant-based snacks. 

Why get Holistic Health Experts help?

Ultimately, you are the one deciding what you put in your mouth. If you don’t want to eat healthily, nobody can do it for you. 

But that does not mean that you will succeed at implementing a healthy diet just with your goodwill. 

Goodwill is an important base, but knowledge is key. Sadly, nowadays, knowledge is spread and diluted in an ocean of marketing lies, disinformation, biased data, and information coming from so-called “experts” full of conflicts and links of interests. 

That’s why we created Holistic Natural Health Experts, the reference platform made by Holistic Health Experts who are totally free of any conflicts or links of interests. 

In our approach, we give you knowledge and advice, personalized natural treatments, and the freedom to make informed choices. 

On the topic of a healthy diet, we created our masterpiece resource, our book called “Healthy diet your fundamental right,” where we explain all you need to know about it.

Additionally, we also offer health consultations to answer all your questions about a healthy diet and suggest personalized advice for your nutritional needs. 

We have a lot of experience helping people reach their health goals and we know how practical solutions need to be in order to be implemented successfully. 

We know that one of the key questions with food always ends up being: where can I find this or that product, and at what price? 

Some very similar products can be sold at very different prices, and if you want to stick to buying healthy food, you need to avoid buying anything and everything at any price.

During our consultations, we also: 

• Send you all the links you need to order your snacks or healthy foods, wherever you are in the world
• Checking the composition of the food product options and select for you the ones best suited to your needs
• Send you all the additional resources you need with appetizing recipes, either directly from specialist websites or via videos or books. Whatever your tastes, you’ll find what you need and like.